This invention relates in general to character recognition apparatus. More specifically, the present invention provides a character recognition apparatus that operates substantially in real time to identify characters drawn using a stylus applied to a tablet. The characters can include alpha-numeric characters, marks, and the like.
Many attempts have been made to automatically recognize handwritten characters drawn using a tablet/stylus pen combination for indicating the relative position of the stylus pen with respect to the tablet. Many of such attempts have included the use of complex software for computer-aided analyzing of the characters. However, there are significant disadvantages attendant this approach. the computer software necessary for character recognition programs is extremely complex. It takes a long time to recognize any given character. This means that character recognition cannot be carried out in real time which significantly limits the application of such a program. It cannot be used "on line" without causing a user to be frustrated.
An alternative to this type of computer-aided recognition is to recognize a character by classifying various typical elements of the character and comparing them with elements predefined in a "look-up" table of elements of known characters. This approach for character recognition can be used when the character can be easily represented by such typical elements which are composed of combinations of straight lines. For such characters, relatively high accuracy of recognition can be achieved.